In this episode of Manchester Scene Stories, I sit down with Duncan Prestbury — a musician whose life has intersected with almost every major wave of Manchester’s underground culture. From punk and new wave to DIY indie labels, early jazz-dance, The Electric Circus, The Fall, Spherical Objects, Object Music, Dub Sex, and the global success of The Jazz Defektors Duncan’s story travels through some of the most important cultural movements Manchester ever produced.
Introduced to me through Jane Winterbottom, Duncan immediately opens up about his musical childhood: a house filled with Latin American music, blues, classical, soul, folk and early rock & roll. Led Zeppelin at 14, rock festivals in the 70s, and a sense of wanting to be on stage from a young age.
But everything changes with the arrival of punk. Duncan describes the energy of The Electric Circus in Collyhurst — a squatted cinema that held 5,000 people, where the kids from the suburbs suddenly had a voice. New wave, DIY labels, object music, home-made 8-hour albums, vans full of records delivered to shops, and personal encounters with early Richard Branson and Geoff Travis of Rough Trade.
He talks about Leeds, The Buzzcocks, The Fall, The Ranch at Foo Foo’s, Roxy & Bowie rooms at Pips, and the sense of movement that gripped the city. There’s a brilliant section where Duncan remembers seeing The Jam, The Clash, Talking Heads, Buzzcocks and The Ramones all in one night.
The conversation takes a powerful turn when Duncan explains being diagnosed with cancer at just 22 — given three months to live. His perspective on life, music and meaning changed completely during recovery. It’s during this period he fell deeply into John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, discovering a spiritual, primal connection with music that reshaped his entire future.
From Hume to the Reno, from Northern soul to jazz funk, he soon finds his way to The Jazz Defectors — starting as an outsider who “bottled” the first approach, only for the dancers to knock on his door weeks later asking him personally to be musical director. The band exploded: 10-piece line-ups, club nights, sold-out shows, mixed backgrounds, Glastonbury performances, and eventually touring Japan — where they even outsold The Rolling Stones, Beastie Boys, and UB40.
Duncan’s journey is one of resilience, creativity, reinvention, and the deep spiritual power of music. From Manchester’s punk birth to jazz-dance world tours, it’s an incredible story from a musician who lived multiple eras of the city’s culture first-hand.
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